Review of the Traffic concert at the Steppenwolf Theatre
Jan Zeff, Copley News Service
Joe Henry may not be a household name in contemporary American music but he made a theater full of converts at the Monday night Traffic series at the Steppenwolf Theatre.
Actually, the large crowd wasn't all converts. A certain number of patrons obviously were familiar with the young man's music, applauding songs in recognition after the opening bars. But it is fair to say that the 100-minute concert introduced Henry and his music to a significant percentage of the audience.
Henry is a singer-songwriter-bandleader-guitarist. He's young, good looking, and has an ingratiating stage presence. He doesn't discuss his music with his listeners, which is his prerogative, but it would be helpful to the first-timers to hear what he had in mind in
composing his music. Some conversation would have been appropriate because most of his program consisted of new songs.
In the absence of explanation, here is one listener's take on what was performed. Henry is a composer with an offbeat sensibility. His lyrics are full of weird images and rhymes. Most of his numbers were quirky love songs, delivered to an unnamed subject, presumably female.
There is an apparent lack of emotion in Henry's music and not much humor. But cumulatively his songs do exert a fascination, marred only by the occasional blurring of a key word in a line through slurred pronunciation.
Henry doesn't have a great singing voice, but it is perfectly suited to his songs. Vocally, he operates in the middle register. His tempos are almost always leisurely and only a couple of numbers built to any real intensity. Henry is laid back in his stage presence and in his music, but that's clearly by intent.
Henry led a superior backup band consisting of David Palmer on keyboards, Chris Bruce on guitar, Jennifer Condos on electric bass, and J. J. Johnson on drums. The band is onstage strictly for support and there were no solos. But the musicianship was high, even though the sameness of the tempos sometimes resulted in a sameness in the music.
Henry's guest star was the noted jazz clarinet player Don Byron. Since the mid-1980s, Byron has been one of the leading musicians in avant-garde jazz, but he isn't confined to any one style. Monday night he mostly played a backup role to Henry, providing lovely, if
self-effacing, accompaniment on clarinet and bass clarinet.
It would have been nice to hear Byron deliver one instrumental number during the evening, but what we heard was melodic and musical, without the dissonance and anger that often mars avant-garde jazz.
Henry's resume is impressive. He's produced records as well as recording numerous CDs. He is also Madonna's brother-in-law. He has made music with John Denver, Roberta Flack, Bobby Darin, and Frank Sinatra, among others. But Henry is probably at his best interpreting his own music, especially in an intimate setting like the Steppenwolf
before an appreciative and attentive audience.
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